George Mueller was a man much like myself, and yet completely set apart from my ways. We have one thing in common: Desperately wanting God to show up in an undeniable way. George Mueller was not American. I am. I like to manipulate things so that I get what I want. When I get it, I can give the credit to God, wondering in my soul if that was God or did I just make it seem that way. As a young, poor, restless Christian, George Mueller had the same problem. He so strongly desired to be a missionary that he resolved to buy a lottery ticket to determine if God should want him in the mission field. When he won money from that ticket, he declared it a genuine sign that the Lord had blessed his efforts, only to be rejected by the missionary society. Mueller learned a priceless lesson from that bit of folly, and his life changed drastically afterward. He then took painstaking care to not play sleight of hand with the Sovereign Will again. He went so far as a pastor to not pass the offering plate in his church for fear of manipulating men's hearts into giving out of guilt. He would not even let a monetary need be known to another man while operating his penniless orphanage, but only took his request to God. He lived out what so many of us claim to believe. God hears prayer and is sovereign over man's heart.
This is not intended to be another biography of Mueller's life (although you should not die without reading A.T. Pierson's account of this man's life!). However radical Mueller's life and practices may seem to us, he would claim the contrary. He even stated that not every man has been called to a like vocation as he, but we are all called to like faith.
I have been encouraged, excited, and challenged by the life of George Mueller. I have also been challenged by this thought that I gleaned from another book I recently read: "How much would your life change if you stopped believing in God?" What the author was asking was: If God didn't show up for you (financially or otherwise) how much of a difference would it really make and how would you react? According to Dave Ramsey, we should plan as if God isn't going to come through. His ministry is certainly helpful in teaching basic principles for managing money, and I have benefited from his "ministry". But should we plan our lives so that we can kick back and "live like no one else" later in life? Much of our American lives are saturated with this type of thinking. Well, what if God doesn't want you to have 3-6 months worth of expenses saved up when you lose your job? What if, instead, He causes a job loss so that you will begin to lean into Him? How glorious does God look when, because I have prepared ahead of time, I really don't need any help other than maybe a new job and moral support. A.T. Pierson states in Mueller's biography "Such love is obedience to a principle of unselfishness, and makes self-sacrifice habitual and even natural. While Satan's motto is, "Spare thyself." Christ's motto is, "Deny thyself.""
What would our lives look like if we only made our requests known to the Sovereign One, and accept His answer as final? I suspect we might own less junk, be less busy, have greater faith, unspeakable joy, and contentment.
Thomas Huxley known as "Darwin's Bulldog" is best recognized from his debate with William Wilberforce in 1860 and his invention of the term agnostic. He was also a contemporary of George Mueller. Huxley was part of the great "Prayer-Gauge Debate" in which he intended to prove that there was no relation to prayer and the healing of the sick. One of Mueller's donors attached a note to a donation that it "might be well if Prof. Huxley and his sympathizers, who had been proposing some new arbitrary "prayer-gauge," would, instead of treating prayer as so much waste of breath, try how long they could keep five orphan houses running, with over two thousand orphans, and without asking any one for help,-- either "GOD or MAN.""
No comments:
Post a Comment